George Quasha
George Quasha (born July 14, 1942) is an American poet and artist who works across media Life Born in White Plains, New York, he now lives with Susan Quasha in Barrytown, New York. He has taught at State University of New York at Stony Brook, Bard College, New School University (Graduate Anthropology Department), and Naropa University. With Susan Quasha he is founder/publisher of Barrytown/Station Hill Press, whose mission is to challenge and expand conceptions of human possibility. Solo exhibitions of his axial stones and axial drawings have taken place at the Baumgartner Gallery in New York (Chelsea), the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia, and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz. This work is also featured in the book, Axial Stones: An Art of Precarious Balance, Foreword by Carter Ratcliff (North Atlantic Books: Berkeley, 2006). For his video installation work art is: Speaking Portraits, which includes multiple volumes (art is, music is, poetry is, he has recorded over 800 artists, poets, and composers (in 11 countries and 21 languages). Just the face of each person is shown at the moment of saying, for instance, what art is. The work has been exhibited at the Snite Museum of Art (University of Notre Dame), at White Box in Chelsea, at the Samuel Dorsky Museum (SUNY New Paltz), and in several other countries (including France and India), and has been featured in several biennials (Wroclaw, Poland; Geneva, Switzerland; Kingston, New York). Further extensions of this work in speaking portraiture include myth is and peace is. His other work in axial video (including Pulp Friction, Axial Objects, Verbal Objects, Axial Landscapes) has appeared internationally in museums, galleries, schools, and biennials. These and other works are extended and updated regularly at www.quasha.com. A 30-year performance collaboration (video/language/sound) continues with Gary Hill and Charles Stein; recently, with the advent of axial drumming/music, he has been performing with the composer David Arner. His other 14 books include poetry (Somapoetics, Giving the Lily Back Her Hands, Ainu Dreams Chie Hasegawa), "preverbs" (Verbal Paradise, as the first of a 5-volume work of "preverbs"); anthologies (America a Prophecy [[Jerome Rothenberg]], Open Poetry Ronald Gross, An Active Anthology Susan Quasha, The Station Hill Blanchot Reader Charles Stein); and writing on art (Gary Hill: Language Willing; with Charles Stein: Tall Ships, HanD HearD/liminal objects, Viewer, and An Art of Limina: Gary Hill's Works and Writings, Foreword by Lynne Cooke. The latter work, an art book with extensive text (640 pgs, 1000 illus,) comprises a full-scale poetics of language and art process, with a theory of principle art as distinguished from, but not exclusive of, conceptual art. Writing Quasha works across media, exploring a principle in common within language, sculpture, drawing, video, sound & music, installation, and performance. This principle, axiality, he defines as "the principle of free-moving order, liminality, and precarious, spontaneous configuration." His 5-volume work of preverbs extends this principle (axial-liminal-configurative) in discrete acts of language called preverbs. He writes in the second vol.: "A preverb, in this special usage, as distinguished from proverb, is a saying in a state of language that stands previous to any claim on wisdom. Each preverb incorporates — takes into its language body — a core issue or notion which, if mastered or somehow resolved, could stand as a point of reference for future thought and therefore condition thinking in a consistent way; if left unmastered and unresolved, because still or even additionally polysemous in its state of language, it becomes a matrix of yet unrealized thinking and a spur to further nature. A preverb works in such a way that a given issue is intensified in all its life/art ambiguity. It contains a certain wild, which here aims to preserve the rich complexity and uncertainty of the impulse to state truth and to protect the mind against oversimplified interpretation." Art His axial stones are delicately balanced sculptures of 2 (occasionally 3) stones positioned one upon another at the most precarious point discovered. Quasha’s sculptural process, more tactile and body-centered than visual, follows strict rules: specific “found” stones must be felt to attract each other; a stone must find its place on the other at the smallest available point of contact; no adhesive is permissible; and neither stone may be modified in any way. In this context, "axial" refers to the invisible axis that comes into focus at the moment of precarious balance. In addition to axial stones, Quasha has created axial drawings, executed with two hands simultaneously; axial drumming/music, non-metrical pulsation-based rhythm arising from interaction of instruments, sounds, surfaces; and axial poems, discovering points of charged variability in actual language use and bringing about a self-actualizing process. Recognition In 2006 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in video art. Other awards include a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry. Publications Poetry *''Somapoetics''. Fremont, MI: Sumac Press, 1973. *''Word-Yum: Somapoetics, 64-69''. New York: Metapoetics Press, 1974. *''Hands in the Land / A Demon by the Throat'' (with Susan Quasha). Annandale: privately published, 1975. *''Giving the Lily Back Her Hands''. Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 1979. *''Ainu Dreams: Poems'' (with Chie buun Hasegawa). Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 1999. *''Verbal Paradise (preverbs). Tenerife, Canary Islands: Zasterle Press, 2010. *''Scorned Beauty Comes up from Behind: Preverbs. Barrytown, New York: Between Editions / Station Hill Press, 2012. *''Glossodelia Attract (preverbs). Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 2014. *''Speaking Animate (preverbs). Barrytown, New York: Between Editions, 2014. *''Things Done for Themselves (preverbs). New York: Marsh Hawk Press, 2015. *''The Daimon of the Moment (preverbs). '' Northfield, Mass., 2015. Non-fiction *''Beowulf (study guide). New York: Monarch Press, 1965. *''HanD HearD / Liminal Objects: Gary Hill’s Projective Installations, Number 1'' (with Charles Stein). Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1997. *''Tall Ships: Gary Hill’s Projective Installations, Number 2'' (with Charles Stein). Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1997. *''Viewer: Gary Hill’s Projective Installations, Number 3'' (with Charles Stein). Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press, 1997. *''Gary Hill - Around and About: Performance Itself'' (with Charles Stein). Paris: Editions du Regard, 2001. *''Gary Hill: Language willing''. further/art / Boise Art Museum, 2002. *''Axial Stones: An art of precarious balance'' (with foreword by Carter Ratcliff). Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2006. *''An Art of Limina: Gary Hill's Works and Writings'' (with Charles Stein; foreword by Lynne Cooke). Barcelona, Spain: Poligrafa, 2009. *''art is (Speaking Portraits).'' New York: Performance Ideas: PAJ, 2016. Edited *''America a Prophecy: A new reading of American poetry from pre-Columbian times to the present'' (edited with Jerome Rothenberg). New York: Random House, 1973. *''Open Poetry'' (with Ronald Gross). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. *''An Active Anthology''. Fremont, Michigan: Sumac Press, 1974. *Maurice Blanchot, The Station Hill Blanchot Reader: Fiction & Literary Essays. Barrytown, New York: Station Hill Press, 1999. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:George Quasha, WorldCat, OCLC, Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Jan. 18, 2015. See also *List of U.S. poets *List of American book publishers References External links ;Poems *Stones" *Poetry *"Not Even Rabbits Go Down This Hole (preverbs)" by George Quasha *"Polypoikilos: matrix in variance (preverbs)" by George Quasha (2017) *"Free Floating Instant Nations (preverbs)" by George Quasha (2014) *"The Eros of Soft Exterior Shocks (preverbs)" by George Quasha (2015) ;Prose *"Blanchot: A metapoetic view *Many essays at academia.edu ;Audio / video *George Quasha's sounds on SoundCloud *Video art by George Quasha *video art by George Quasha ;Books *George Quasha at Amazon.com ;About *George Quasha Official website *A Singular Sacred by George Quasha, by Charles Bernstein *Balancing Act: The many arts of George Quasha and Station Hill Press, Interview on Chronogram ;Etc. *Baumgartner Gallery website *Station Hill of Barrytown publishers website Category:Living people Category:1942 births Category:American poets Category:American artists Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:American book publishers (people)